Work has already started on some projects, while others have extensive plans ready to act on.

The port’s three commissioners agree that the next director needs to be able to execute those plans.

They say they feel good about the finalists, but they aren’t revealing who they are. The pool of several dozen applicants was whittled to four finalists, who were interviewed by commissioners earlier this month.

After the interviews, “my sense was we all felt pretty confident about a particular candidate,” Port Commissioner Troy McClelland said.

All the candidates have port experience “by one definition or another,” Mohr said. He helped pick the finalists and has agreed to stay on through Jan. 2.

For much of the past century, the port was home to mills and other industrial operations. Countless numbers of logs moved through, but that had begun to decline by the time Mohr arrived in 1997.

Mohr credits his predecessors with beginning the transition from a waterfront dominated by smokestacks. Much of that evolution, though, happened on his watch.

“A lot of these properties, when I came here, were abandoned or all-but-abandoned former mill buildings not adding a lot of value to the community,” he said.